No, Really

This evening we were at a potluck at Sam's Montessori school. The school is located in a public elementary school in Brighton, a classy suburb. Near the end I gave Susan a little time to eat some cake while I took Sam wandering around the hallways. While doing so we ran across a couple of middle-aged adults playing violin in a hallway. They were playing Bach's double violin concerto, even, and doing a very nice job of it!

Sam was very interested, and wanted me to carry him close by to listen. This alone is noteworthy, given the cloud of frenetic children he'd just been surrounded by. He wasn't alone: there were about four other toddlers sitting there for the impromptu concert. (Sam sat next to a little girl with chubby cheeks and curly brown hair who smiled and flirted with him.)

For a long time the two violins played simultaneously, but at one point, as dictated by the music, one violin was playing while the other was silent. It was at this point Sam looked over at me and said, excitedly, "he won!"

* * *

We've noticed that Sam has a good ear for music. The other night the three of us were listening to Messaien's Quartet for the End of Time on the radio. Being influenced by experiences in a Nazi POW camp, it's a little more existentialist and modern than I am used to, but we were interested to hear it. Sam referred to it as "spooky."

Well, at one point Sam and I went down to the basement to play a little, and you could only faintly hear the music in the distance. Sam, at one point, was trying to figure out what the noise was in the distance and asked me. I said, What noise? He replied by singing half a dozen notes of the melody, nailing the pitches!

Another time he identified Vivaldi's Gloria when we were driving someplace, because I had a tendency to listen to it when taking him to the zoo. After his third birthday we will be taking to a weekly music class at his school. I suspect, it being Montessori, this will involve wandering around and playing various "ethinic" instruments. Maybe it will help him develop rhythmic skills? Almost certainly he'll have fun.